Home

After long hours of traveling (in total, about 48 from the time I left for the airport in Accra to the time I landed in La Crosse!) I have finally made it home! Thoughts will be forthcoming as I readjust to my familiar life, but for now I am simply thankful to be back among some of the people I missed dearly during the last nine months. Your prayers, support, and encouragement have been invaluable the entire time I was gone, and I thank each of you!

For those of you who live in or near La Crosse, I am having an evening of sharing and celebrating on Friday, June 4 from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm at First Presbyterian Church in La Crosse. All are invited to come to hear me share a bit about my experiences, see some pictures, and enjoy refreshments afterward. I would love to see you!

Shea!

I have been living in a village called Dalun, nearby Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana, for the past week, working in a shea butter cooperative. This means that most days of the week I and my four counterparts, who are all staying at a center known as the Ghanaian Dutch Community Programme in Dalun, work with local women as they process shea nuts into shea butter, some of which is exported across the world. So far we have been directly involved in almost every aspect of shea butter processing, from harvesting the nuts to boiling them to removing their soft outer coating to washing them to grinding them to roasting them over a fire to milling them into a paste to mixing that paste with water until it releases a fatty substance similar to shea butter to boiling the resultant shea compound until it is refined. The entire process takes about a week.

On the 22nd we will leave Dalun and make an excursion to Mole National Park, where we will hope to see some of the animals that have always bounded into my imagination when I think of African wildlife, before beginning our journey back through Tamale and Kumasi and finally Accra, where we will spend just under a week before (hopefully, depending on the consequences of the British Airways strike) departing on the evening of May 30 for America. Scarcely can I imagine that in hardly more than 2 weeks I will be back in my original home (original because in some, though not all, ways Ghana has become a home for me)!

For those of you in the La Crosse area, note that I plan to have a small presentation of pictures on the evening of Friday, June 4, but I will get more details out soon.

Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in mine, friends; by God's grace we shall meet again soon.

City Living

Before I get into how life has been for me during the many weeks that have elapsed since my last few feeble posts, let me make you a promise that I will try to get a more substantial post up in the next week or so and apologize (though without any guilt whatsoever--it couldn't have been helped!) that I have not been posting regularly.

The latest update from our Ghana cohort, a sketch of our life in the village of Oguaa written by Kathleen Ryan, one of the five of us in Ghana, is available here, if you care to peruse and get a better picture of our daily life in there. Now that I am sharing it with you, though, it is a bit outdated; on April 17, we moved from Oguaa to Kumasi, Ghana's 2nd largest city, where we have begun working at orphanages and creches (nursery schools). It is good to be back among some of the more familiar things in life--I missed my commute to work by tro-tro, and internet access is more convenient now--but I miss Oguaa and its people. I miss Nana, the grandfatherly chief whose constant refrain is "Come and chop!" (Come and eat!) and "Afriyie, wodaa yie?" (Jessica, did you sleep well?). I miss Sewaa, the chief's sister and constant presence in my daily life who makes me wish only to be that energetic, caring, and lively in my old age; her tears of goodbye triggered mine when she wept, "Yerenfere mo; nrefere yen." (We will never forget you; do not forget us.) I miss Akwasi, my 14-year-old (or 9-year-old, depending on who you ask) friend whom I would help every night with his homework and who would sometimes bring me mangoes or call me to check in when we went on trips, and who still calls me almost every day. I miss Malia, my 4-year-old host sister, who would come grab my hand and say my Twi name, "Akua!" when I emerged early each morning from my room. These are people I will never forget.

And yet, as I said, life has moved on, and now I am getting to know Nana Amma, my 32-year-old host sister, her 18-month-old son Kofi, and her mother Ma Afia and my new route to work at Swift Montessori (catch a car to Kotei, then from there take one to Tech Jct, where cars are waiting for passengers like me who are going to Anwomaso). But more on this later! For now best wishes as we close out April, and greetings to all!

Still Doing Well

Just checking in... Internet time has been ever scantier, but let me assure you that God continues to bless me and pass on a few links:

*A Princeton article: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/76/33K78/index.xml?section=featured
*Nick's "Update from the Field" for February: http://www.princeton.edu/bridgeyear/updates/archives/?id=2649

Life is good! I am looking forward to sharing more when I return to the United States, but I am enjoying every day for the next two and a half months in the meantime to the fullest!

Love,
Jessica

We don't need blankets in Ghana, but we need to wrap ourselves in prayer

Thanks to all of you who have interceded for me and the other four students in prayer over the last 6 months. I only have a couple of minutes at this internet cafe, so I can't say much, but suffice it to say that although living here continues to be a blessing and I thank God every day for having brought me to Ghana, I am experiencing a lot of spiritual growth here too, and it is not always easy. Part of that growth is a deeper understanding of God's hand in the world as He manifests Himself through the Holy Spirit, who I am getting to know better after having attended a Pentecostal church each Sunday in Accra and now talking to people in the village who have a much different concept of the Spirit's presence in life. In contrast, I have met priests and priestesses (there are about four or five being trained in our village) and seen them go into trances, wildly dancing at festivals.

So I believe that spiritual warfare exists on a much more real plane that I ever understood back in America. Because of this, I now realize how absolutely vital your prayers over me are. In Ghana, I am outside my usual circle of faith--my community and family of believers. Here, I regularly go to church and actually read the Bible and pray more frequently than I used to, but I still plead with you to lift me and the rest of the group before God frequently. Please pray for spiritual fortitude for us, for protection against evil, and for the joy and strength of the Lord in all that we do.

I wish I could give you a longer exposition, but know that it is well with my soul, for I am resting in the Lord. I pray for you, and I simply ask that, although the distance separating us is great, so is the power of the Father, His Son, and His Spirit, and so let us pray for each other as brothers and sisters.

Love in Christ,
Jessica


P.S. A few pictures...

A View of Transition and Life Beyond

As of today, I have been living in Oguaa, a small village of perhaps three to four hundred people, for 40 days—and though they have not been without challenges, these 40 days have been remarkably joyful. So many things here are so different from my past experiences (both in the US and in Accra), but I think the most noteworthy is the fact that I have stopped noticing many of them. Things that once may have surprised or shocked me are normal, and one-time nuisances have come to be just what I need to brighten my days. Life in Oguaa is good.

I won't give you an extensive recounting of our journey from Accra to Oguaa via Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city and the nearest place (at about 2 hours away) where I can find reliable internet access. Each month one of the five of us Bridge Year students writes an update from the field and submits it to Princeton for publication on their website, and so when my opportunity to write the update came in January, I chose to write about our transition. You can find my report here (and roam the site to find the archived updates written by Nick, Kathleen, Cole, and Aria) if you want to fill in some of the gap between my last blog post and the previous ones.

But for the most part, as I alluded to, the transition is over, replaced by living. No longer do the not-uncommon power outages seem terribly inconvenient; as long as my phone has enough battery to last until the power comes back on in a few hours, I have come to enjoy the respite from the constant background din of peoples' radios that a “lights off” brings. The surprisingly terrifying grunts and bays of the fattened ram who is tied up nearby are now more apt to make me shake my head as I bid him goodnight than to make the hair on the back of my neck bolt upright. Many times a day when a child stares after me as I pass, singing out, “Oboruni kכkכ, maakye!” (“White person/foreigner, good morning!”) at any time of the day, I answer quickly with a little dance and a sing-song call—“Yaa, fikyiri gon-gon!” (the expected gibberish response)—rather than bewilderment at why kids are wishing me good morning at 4:00 in the afternoon. All of this is just part of how I live.

In short, the details of how I live are thus: I stay in a house which is basically one row or bank of rooms (a toilet room, bathing room, kitchen, and chicken coop) opposite a small, empty, cement “courtyard” from another bank of rooms, which shaped like a block-lettered “C”. Basically, my house is a square, but one side of the square is not connected to the others, and in the middle of the square is an open area which is flat and cemented. Each of the rooms has door that opens onto this “courtyard.” My house is not occupied by a single family; rather, there is the elder of the house, who is called “כpanin” (“Elder”), an old woman and her two young granddaughters (Sekina and Malia), who have become the equivalent of my host family under these odd living circumstances, and two teachers (Owusu and Akwasi Edward) in their early twenties.

Because I don't quite live with a host family (I am more like the other two teachers, who are renting the rooms, than an exchange student living with and learning from a family as a temporary member), I spend a lot of my time with Aria, Nick, Kathleen, and Cole at our Bridge Year headquarters, located in the village chief's house. Like me, Cole and Kathleen stay in houses in the village, while Aria and Nick have rooms in the chief's house, which is a compound similar to mine. However, when we are not sleeping or spending time in our rooms or with the other residents of our houses, we tend to gather at Nana's place, as we know headquarters. Whether cooking our communal meals, doing the dishes, or just hanging out, simply spending time together has helped me to develop friendships that I really value with each of the other four students. To be honest, it has been a struggle at times to adjust to the new living circumstances after my wonderful host family in Accra, and I sometimes feel that I should spend more time at my house than Nana's place, but I am learning to divide my time well and look forward to continuing spending time with the best friends I have in Ghana.

In terms of work, I am teaching at a middle school called Seniagya Methodist Junior High School, located in a village about a ten minute walk from Oguaa. In the school—a fairly new building comprised of three classrooms and an office—there are three “forms” equivalent to 6th, 7th, and 8th grades with about 25 students in each form. Initially I expected that I would be assisting teachers and tutoring and generally trying to be helpful, but I am in fact the form 1 (6th grade) math teacher. This means that if you need any help calculating a fraction's lowest terms or talking about the relationship between a plane shape like a circle and the net of a solid such as a cylinder, I am the person to come to, particularly if you would like a faltering explanation in Twi! I teach my 25 students, who range in age from 12 to 19, four times a week for about 70 minutes if the school is running on schedule (or about 60 minutes if it is a typical day) using a mix of a little English and as much Twi as I can muster. No class ever goes quite as expected according to the lesson plans I write, but I am proud to say that my students know the difference between a ray and a line, and I am pretty confident that I know all their names. Never could I have guessed how simply rewarding and mind-blowingly frustrating teaching can be and is—but my name is now Madam.

To distill these details, this life is unlike anything I have experienced before, including life in Accra—but as I stared in wonder at the magnificent, sizzling purple thunder tearing through the resolute black sky two nights ago, I realized I don't want to live any other life right now.

Oguaa in the morning

I wake up in the morning only after much snooze button-fumbling within the confines of my mosquito net: Why is it only 5:30? Though it takes a burst of pure willpower, eventually I work up the energy to switch off my alarm, sit up, unzip my net, and slip through the opening, usually without falling onto the floor. As my bare feet scuffle across the smooth cement floor, I slip on my trusty Old Navy flip flops to avoid any of the friendly but intimidating spiders that may have ventured off the wall and onto the floor before grabbing my two yards of green and brown printed cloth, which I use to wrap around me in some kind of toga-esque style.

I unlock the door, take a few sheets of toilet paper for good measure, and shuffle across the courtyard of my compound to the bathroom. The small cement room contains a broom made from palm fronds, an empty plastic oil container, and a plastic seat embedded in the top of a hollow cement column--a welcoming sight. Exiting the bathroom, I shuffle back into my room by the light of a luminous moon and the bare flourescent lightbulb protruding from the exterior wall. I collect my towel, shampoo, bathing sponge (called "sapo," which is a rectangular piece of netting about 6 inches by 24 inches used to scrub oneself while bathing--the Ghanaian loofah), and tiny blue plastic pail before again venturing across the courtyard. A quick glance around helps me identify the two bathing buckets: one to dip into the huge barrel of water, and another to hold the water fetched with the first bucket. One, two, three times I submerge the smaller of the two buckets in the barrel, and one, two, three times the water splashes from one bucket into the other.

As I enter the stark bathing room, I hang my towel and cloth over the frail wooden door, and steel myself: the water scooped by the little pail will be cold, and the morning is not particularly warm either. Begin with the feet, because they require the most attention and scrubbing to remove the earthy-fine dust, and then proceed to pour a little water onto my chest to reduce the shock of drenching my hair in the morning chill. Scrub a little, pour on some water, and scrub some more. The bucket bath is neither complicated nor pretentious, but no matter the cold that creeps into my fingertips: this is the perfect beginning.

I greet my eight-year-old host sister, Sekina, as I notice her sitting on the cement step in a long, dusty, elegant skirt: "Sekina, maakye." "Yaa, ena," she replies, and we exchange a smile before I disappear into my room. Inside, the clothes from which I pick a simple outfit for the day are stuffed into an extra duffel bag I had brought along, for there is no need for the luxury of a dresser in my bare room; the bed stands independent and alone against shockingly vibrant blue walls.

So I am clothed, and I wriggle my feet into my trusty sandals before doing my mental survey of the morning. Remembering, I retreive my industrial-sized Walgreen's pharmacy bottle and select a particularly delicious-looking malarone (malaria prophylaxis) pill and swallow it with the aid of lukewarm water from a sachet. Now the morning is complete. I gather the essentials for a day of teaching 6th grade math--a black pen for writing lesson plans, a red pen for correcting exercises, a copy of the slim Pupil's Textbook for Mathematics, the Mathematics Syllabus for Junior High School, my flimsy lesson plan book, and a Ghc1 note in case some of the kids need to buy lunch--and a few necessities for life--sunscreen, some tissue, my cell phone. I open the door, exit, and turn the key firmly in the lock.

"Nana, mepaakyew, mereko sukuu. Onyame adom, yebehyia awia!"
Grandma, please, I am going to school. By God's grace, we shall meet this afternoon!

Goodbye to a second home

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, it's only a day away!

I can scarcely believe that in 24 hours I will just be arriving in Kumasi to begin the second phase of my Ghanaian life. Please pray for safety and health for our group, a good adjustment, and a sense of purpose and community as we continue our volunteer work and cultural exploration. I thank God for your prayers and support throughout my time in Ghana!

After I arrive in the village where I will be living, it's unlikely that I will have frequent internet access (it will be much less convenient to get to an internet cafe) and so my blog postings will be less prolific. However, I promise not to forget to pop in to give you an update every once in a while! :)

Love to you all,
Jessica

Buronya (n):

(1) A holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ and celebrated on 25 December. (2) Twi for "Christmas." (3) Literally translated, "foreigner" (oboruni) "receives" (nya), as in the foreigner is celebrating receiving something.

Buronya... These definitions are all accurate, but not in the least the whole picture of my Christmas with my host family in Adenta. So let me provide you with some other pictures to help you understand a bit better:

This is how I began my Christmas: with a miniature stocking to garnish my mosquito net! My wonderful parents sent me a Christmas package from America containing this stocking, presents for me and my host family, and a couple of more essentials: candy canes and Werther's toffees. They sent it on 20 November and it reached me just in time for Christmas on 21 December.


Usually my host family opens gifts together, they told me, but this year everyone was very busy and so I gave the presents out piecemeal since we didn't have anything like the Christmas Eve present extravaganza that usually takes place at my house in America. Often families in Ghana have a large meal on Christmas, with fresh chicken and cake and other delicacies, but my family feasted on the traditional dish of banku, which Cole describes well in the second half of this blog post. When my younger host brother Kwaku learned that Christmas had passed without this feast, his face fell and he announced, "Then I did not spend my Christmas well!" Cute though his response was, I found that the way we did spend Christmas, at a series of church services, was a nice respite from the consumerism and materialism that so often cloud the miracle of Jesus' incarnation on Christmas.


This is a snapshot of church one morning, with the ladies bedecked in their finest to come and worship with fervent prayer and joyful, energetic dancing. I attend the Church of Pentecost with my host family, and for Christmas the church held what is called a "convention" -- basically a series of twice daily services of prayer, preaching and dancing. Suffice it to say that I have never before spent Christmas morning shouting praise, singing worship songs, praying aloud, dancing with abandon, and playing the tambourine with such verve that even my kneecaps were sweating! We began the convention on Christmas Eve with an outdoor service for about 3 hours in the evening, then continued on Christmas Day and Boxing Day with 3 hours inside the church in the morning and 4 hours outside at a dirt park in the evening both days. On the final day, 27 December, we worshiped for 5 hours in the morning and into the early afternoon.

That evening, I attended my older host sister's church choir program, which entailed a time of prayer and praise and worship (complete with dancing!) in addition to a performance by four area Pentecostal choirs. Below I am dancing with a woman who grabbed my arm and joined me as I shuffled and swayed along to a Twi worship song I could only partially understand.


It is customary on the first Sunday after New Year's Eve (when once again there was a church service, this one about 4 hours, called Watchnight) to wear a new outfit if you have one, or at the very least to dress up specially. In appreciation of my attendance at the Christmas Convention, the Twi song I had sung in front of the congregation a few months earlier, the fact that I am an "osofo ba" (pastor's child), and a genuine kindness and generosity, the head pastor gave me a gift of kente cloth, the traditional cloth of the Ashantis (and Ewes), which is woven and usually worn by royals such as chiefs, the Asantehene (Ashanti king), and their kin, as well as the wealthy. It is very highly valuable; for example, my pattern and quantity of kente would likely cost a couple hundred Cedis, equal to well over $130. My host mom brought me to a tailor who sewed it into a traditional outfit, a kaba (blouse) and slit (fitted skirt), for me. Here I am with my two younger host brothers and an even younger house guest on our way to church.


My host mom also ensured that I looked like a proper lady, so she lent me a purse, a gorgeous necklace, and this elegant hat to complete my look. So elegant did I feel that I couldn't help but strike a pose!


That morning before church I attended Adenta Keep Fit Club, an organization that holds meetings at 6:00 am every Saturday, Sunday, and public holiday for the sole purpose of beginning the day with some intense aerobics and other exercises. I had been going every possible Saturday since late September, and so on Sunday, my final day, I learned that my season of humbly receiving gifts from the generous community I have found in Ghana was not over. My friends at Adenta Keep Fit Club sent me off in style with kind words and a gift a new dress (which I am wearing below while posing with my host sister Harriet) and a kente stoll!


After taking a group picture, we bade farewell with wishes of "Afenhyia pa" ("The year should meet well") and responses of "Afenkכ mmεto yεn" ("The year should go around and come meet us again") -- and "Yεbεhyia bio, Onyame adom" ("By God's grace we will meet again").


So I am left humbled at the end of a Christmas season spent in Ghana. I didn't make a snowman or sit cuddled up with hot chocolate and a blanket in front of the fireplace; I didn't even wear long sleeves! There were no Advent celebrations, and few stores strung out even green and red tinsel, much less tiny strands of lights. I never did have that Christmas meal of fresh chicken and all the cake I could want, and my host family didn't hunker down in their pajamas for a good ol' family gift exchange.

And yet, through this Christmas season, I have been blessed in new and unexpected ways. I have experienced firsthand an outpouring of kindness and generosity, both in tangible ways (kente, a dress, the stoll...) and intangible ways. I have enjoyed time off from work to spend more time with my host family before we are separated in a few days when I move to Kumasi. And I have felt the Spirit of God in a unique and affirming way as I have considered what it could mean that the Son of Man and the Son of God are truly One. Friends, it means more things than I can explain and even fathom, but what I know absolutely is this: Christmas is an expression of Love to us. I thank God that I feel loved in Ghana and loved in America -- and above all, as Buronya is drawing to a close, I marvel at the simple fact that Love loves me and Love loves you.